Flashpoint
by neruko mika
Summary: Accelerator & Esther Rosenthal may have successfully stopped Hishigata's attempt at a level 6 Esper from destroying Academy City, but the problems don't exactly end there. From the ordeal come nightmares that soon begin to plague Accelerator's waking hours. Slowly becoming sleep deprived, how long can the #1 lvl 5 Esper hide the issue before things begin to spiral out of control?


**Flashpoint**

Noun:

_1\. a place, event, or time at which trouble, such as violence or anger, flares up._

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**Prologue- The Beginning**

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_It was the sudden appearance of a bright light that took him completely by surprise, effectively blinding him._

_The first few seconds of zero visibility were disorienting. White dominated his field of vision. All sense of touch and feel vanished. Silence reigned in absence of noise. Everything that classified him as being remotely alive —his very identity as a functioning human being— was abruptly taken away from him, and had in turn reduced him to a state of physical non-existence: a free thinking ball of human consciousness floating within an isolated, blank world._

_It was peaceful._

_...And then what felt like an unimaginably sharp pain hit him like a ton of bricks, sending him crashing back into reality._

_Everything hurt. His eyes were watering from staring at the overhead lights for too long, eyelids held forcibly open by some unseen force that he felt too weak to overcome. He felt as the hot tears leaking from his eyes trailed down the sides of his increasingly cold face, dampening the hair near the edges of his ears. Air was hard to come by in his lungs, with his efforts to breathe rewarded with short, raggedly, pained gasps. His body twitched unresponsively underneath what felt like coarse gravel, heavy with fatigue, and his clothes felt glued to his skin in places with a warm, sticky liquid substance. There was a strong iron smell that permeated the air around him, with the taste of that same metal also in his mouth, mixed in with the dirt and saliva. And every second that passed made him feel even sicker, weaker, colder..._

_He was dying_.

_Just what the hell was going on? Where exactly was he, and who was the one to have brought him down to this pitiful state? __His mind was in total disarray, unable to comprehend what was happening. He felt like shit lying there all confused. His ears picked up the sound of footsteps as whoever it was __walked slowly towards him, with each step doing nothing to calm his frayed nerves. They stopped once they had reached his location, and the figure thankfully blocked out the light from his eyes as it loomed above him._

_A faint gust of wind blew throughout the area._

_The figure began to speak, and while he could not understand what the hell was being said to him, it was not the aspect that he focused on specifically. His focus was drawn to the familiar voice itself: gratingly happy, borderline maniacally insane. The dark, horrible laughter that would send chills down anyone's spine. Words that were laced with the crazy of a teen who was excited to watch others being murdered by their own hands, and getting high off the adrenaline that would course through his veins in the aftermath…_

_His fucked up vision, curtesy of light damage, picked up a black shirt, blurry pale skin and recognizable white hair —and knew that something was terribly wrong with the situation._

_The Accelerator was standing above him._

_He was staring at HIMSELF._

_"...nngh..."_

_The other Accelerator spoke to him again, and right after that he felt the wound around his leg being squeezed without remorse. It hurt so much that he saw stars dance across the edges of his sight and he screamed a girl's high pitched scream of agony —which he faintly realised wasn't his voice at all, but that of a familiar person... And it served to get the other Esper all riled up, finishing with the sound of his bones cracking from the pressure and causing the other to laugh in glee._

_The pain became unbearable after that; the world went black for a few seconds before his view shifted to the old Accelerator's angle. He was in shock at the scene in front of him...when his eyes gazed upon countless lifeless Sisters on the ground, all having been dismembered by the masses in many different ways. He wanted to scream, to say something, to find out what the hell was going on._

_Yet all that came out of his mouth was laughter. The insidious laughter of a madman that knew no bounds, no regrets, no empathy. _

_It was his voice, yet it felt so alien..._

_Then his eyes set upon a young brown haired girl standing in the middle of the corpses and he watched as his bloodied hand raised—_

**-:—:—:—:—:—:-**

It was still dark, despite the light from the night sky entering through the open window.

As his heartbeat began to regulate itself, Accelerator frowned. Something, for some reason, just felt _off_ about the room he was sleeping in. And it wasn't because it was a completely new place —he was switched out of 203 for a few days due to the damage caused by that blond haired necromancer, and into a room with a certain child-sized brat who he nearly died saving _again_. He was (unfortunately) well acquainted with his new temporary roommate and knew that she wasn't a danger to his person, so there was no real reason for him to feel this way. And the hospital they were in was, for the most part, a safe place. At least, it was safe with him around.

Still, the feeling of _wrongness_ grew stronger and his gut told him to investigate.

His eyes traveled from the open window on his left to the dark ceiling above, ending up on the opposite side of the room where the young girl would be located, sleeping peacefully in her own bed. But was empty.

Yet somebody was _there_.

Accelerator couldn't see the intruder well enough. All he could make out was a tall, black mass moving back and forth around the little girl's bed. Knowing that she had a penchant for being indirectly involved in the dark side of Academy city's twisted plans, it was only obvious that someone found out about her location, timed her kidnapping while he was incapacitated, and decided to strike.

_Not on my watch_, he thought. His head translated that into a mix of weird words due to his aphasia, but the sentiment was there.

...And that's when Accelerator ran into the first problem at hand.

His body wouldn't freaking _move_. Given that his motor skills were usually horrible without the electrode around his neck on and functioning, it took effort to raise his hands up without it looking like he was struggling. That meant it was possible for teen to get up on his own…eventually. But no matter how much he tried to get up, it translated into zero in his current situation. He was stuck, frozen in place.

It didn't stop there.

More black masses came into the room, walking around, elongating and shrinking as they moved from floor level to the ceiling. Accelerator eyed them all warily as he kept up his feeble attempt to move. What were the chances that it could be an attack from another Esper? Or two? One to psyche him, the other to immobilize? He tried to shout in an attempt to grab a passing nurses' attention because it was clearly obvious that this shit was beyond the realms of real life right now, but quickly found himself with a second problem: he could not speak. He couldn't even grunt nor spill his usual word vomit.

For the first time in his life, he felt completely powerless.

The black masses then began to speak, and their voices started to get louder and distorted. Panic started to set in as they slowly began to move closer to his bed, taking the outline of nameless scientists with their lab coats and dead MISAKA clones with their toy guns held firmly in their hands. Each one had a sinister smile plastered on their face.

By the time they formed a wall around him, their voices were so loud that Accelerator began to force his mouth to scream if only to hear himself amongst the cacophony of noise. And, unnerving enough, it certainly helped to have a mass in the shape of a certain little brown haired girl on his bed, staring straight at him with black, malevolent eyes.

**-:—:—:—:—:—:-**

It was still dark, but the light from the night sky now made a difference to the atmosphere in the room. Things looked a little more lively on his side, bathed in a soft bluish glow. He let out a small sigh and was relieved to hear the sound of his voice after..._that_. The strange feeling from before was also gone.

After what seemed like an eternity trying to calm his overclocked heart, Accelerator decided to check up on the brat. He slowly turned his head to the right and noticed that her bed was empty. She was gone.

He eyes widened in shock. That's when the door to the room opened with a soft _shhhk_.

Quickly closing his eyes to feint sleep, he heard the small pitter-patter of bare feet, plus the sounds of flats, as they made their way towards the other bed. There were some words that were whispered, followed by what sounded like familiar light giggling noises. Then he heard the sound of the door being opened and closed again.

After a few moments of silence, Accelerator opened his eyes. He could now see a mound occupying the bed beside him, the middle section rising and falling as the child inside slumbered peacefully. Satisfied that there was nothing else in that section of the room besides his roommate, he turned his head back to the ceiling and moved his arms just to assure himself that everything was alright before falling back to sleep.

When the first dream replayed itself twice —once to the conclusion, the second with a mixture of both the first and whatever the hell the second was— Accelerator woke up with a gasp and decided to stay awake the rest of the night. Besides, with the odd sense of fear that he felt course through him coupled with the images from the dreams, it was going to be impossible to get his brain to stop thinking about it long enough to any sleep done tonight.

"Tch".

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**Prologue- The Beginning [END]**

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**Hello! If you made it to this author's note, then thank you for reading! It's my first time writing for the ToAru fandom... jumped in the boat after I saw _Kagaku no Accelerator_ and Im in ****love. I hope I can do a good job with this little story. This will be taking place between the end of the Necromancer Arc and before the Full Course Arc. I'll try to keep the characters in line with how they usually act. Feedback is immensely appreciated, as are suggestions or likes, whichever. Make sure give the story a follow if you are interested in reading more! And ****a little warning for people: if you haven't read the Accelerator manga (not the idol one), then try to avoid reading this. I will be bringing up spoilers (just a bit), and mixing in some aspects of the anime. **

**Ps: Ty to Ryder for catching the error of Esther's name in the summary... my tablet tends to autocorrect everything and i usually have to manually fix her name! Forgot to do it this time... and yes Im aware of the "Estelle" translation, but the Japanese toaru character page has her name as "Esther".**

**EDIT (09-06): I haven't posted the next chapter due to editing. I tend to take time to post chapters up to make sure that what im posting doesnt sound weird. I also try to do my research to make sure I know the background of the characters before I write. It's almost done though (had been finished since 08-30, and editing since 09-04), but I want to wait and see how the anime unfolds so I get a general idea as to how its different from the manga. But I WILL post it up soon, don't worry. Just give me some time to bring out the best i can offer, and thank you all for the support, favorites and follows (please do so if you want to read more of this story, heh)**


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